


Run Away Home

by YourIdiotWriter



Series: Prompt Fills [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fill, Sumigakure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 19:03:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8413045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourIdiotWriter/pseuds/YourIdiotWriter
Summary: Sasuke goes home.((Prompt fill for the Sumigakure Halloween Event 2016))





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #3: Sneaky Creeping Shadows

It took three months before Sasuke was allowed to return to the Uchiha compound. They wouldn’t let him any sooner than that, and although he insisted, he could imagine why. Most of the adults around him thought he would never return. Many suggested alternative housing. Some even offered, but Sasuke never accepted. He couldn’t.

Perhaps against his better judgement, he wanted to see the damage his brother had done for himself. Maybe it was to ensure that it wasn’t a dream. Maybe it was just because he wanted to prove a point.

In the end, the reason didn’t matter much. What mattered was that he was standing at the compound entrance, recalling vividly the state it was in the last time he’d be there.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Sasuke-kun?” the nurse who had taken him there asked. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

Sasuke stared down the main road and shook his head. He held his breath, releasing the one hand he had clasped tightly around the nurse’s while keeping his other clenched at the hem of his shirt, and didn’t exhale until he walked past the gate alone.

“I’m right here if you need me,” the nurse said from behind.

“I don’t,” he said sharply. “Go away.”

Sasuke didn’t check to see if the nurse had actually left or not. It didn’t matter to him, as long as they didn’t follow him.

He didn’t need them. He didn’t need anybody. Not anymore.

He needed to do this alone. He needed to prove a point.

Sasuke didn’t remember the road to his home being so long, and the eerie silence made it seem all the longer. He walked past his aunt’s house, where she used to greet him every morning on his way to the Academy; past the tea shop where his father would go to meet the higher-ups; past the park where his mother used to take him as a child.

He tried hard not to think about his brother. He tried, but even if the bodies were gone and the blood was cleaned, he was still everywhere Sasuke looked, watching him through eyes he couldn’t see. He kept walking.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being followed - or perhaps stalked, like prey - but when he turned around, nobody was there; not even the nurse. He scoffed to himself. Everything was empty, just how it was supposed to be.

(But then, why didn’t it feel empty?)

Sasuke straightened up and continued to walk. He was almost there. Almost home.

The doctors told him to reconsider. The Hokage spoke to him, too, but Sasuke had to return. He could hear their voices every night, calling out to him in his dreams, from the shadows underneath his bed. They were loud and pleading and desperate for company, for attention, for anything to fill the void that their absence left behind. The compound was waiting for him. Sasuke didn’t want to keep them waiting any longer, nor did he want to stay away for any longer.

A tree rustled in the wind, causing its shadow to distort and Sasuke to flinch.

Their voices grew louder, not like a storm, but like a growing presence that threatened to engulf him. He stared at the shadow, eyes fixated on its movements as he waited for it to stop, but it never did. Instead, it grew, its black roots claiming new territory. Memories he thought he’d buried away crept back to the surface - images of black shadows pooling beneath his dead parents, of his brother emerging from them with blood red eyes, watching him.

Waiting.

There is no value in killing the likes of you.

His brother’s voice resonated all around him, as though it were consuming his entire body and ripping through him from the inside out. Sasuke clutched his chest. It felt tight, like something was coiling around him, leaving him short of breath, but not panicked. He refused to panic.

Not again. Never again.

He took a step forward. It was shaky and uncertain, but what mattered was that he’d taken it at all. His brother’s voice resonated again.

Run away.

Sasuke took one forceful step after another, forcing himself to walk down the road that had been haunting him for the past three months. Running away was not an option. It was physically no longer an option. He kept walking.

Every step took him deeper into his memories of that night, begging him not to forget. They clung to his mind and his very essence, forever a part of him whether he liked it or not. The trees continued to dance, their broken arms and crooked fingers scraping against nearby buildings, breaking the silence like nails on a chalkboard.

Sasuke closed his eyes and covered his ears. The pleading, he could deal with. They were like white noise in the background, with no discernible words pulling him one way or another, but this was different. It was grating and made his hair stand on end. The wind stopped, and so did the trees, and so did the scraping.

He took a teeth breath and uncovered his ears before opening his eyes. The scraping had stopped, but the shadows were still there. Sasuke kept walking, but kept his eyes on them. He felt that they were watching him, so he, too, would watch them back.

He was not wrong to do so. They started to move.

The shadows swelled and reached for him, and Sasuke watched as they took the form of the corpses he saw that night, littering the streets and casting unspeakable silhouettes from behind the screen doors, like broken puppets and paper dolls. There was nothing there, he told himself. There was nothing left.

He blinked, and the shadows were gone, retreated back to the tree from where they came. Everything was motionless and quiet. Sasuke stood in silence and waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. It felt to vivid to have been his imagination, but then, nothing about his life felt real anymore.

There was nobody in sight, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being followed. There had to be someone there, but even when he turned around to check, the road was empty. The compound was quiet, inside and out, and the pressure on his chest was gone. His brother’s voice was gone. Everything was gone.

Sasuke sprinted the rest of the way home.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh geez this turned out really weird and vague and didn’t end up being what I intended it to be. Again. That seems to be a trend with these prompt fills lolwhoops
> 
> @[sumigakure](http://sumigakure.tumblr.com/) on tumblr is a new Naruto fanfiction blog for people to suggest prompts and for writers to take them up, so if you're looking for ideas or fics, I highly recommend checking it out!


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